Drinking Closer to Home

by Jessica Anya Blau

  The air outside smelled like lemons. It was a gorgeous sunny Thursday, a perfect day for Emery to lose his virginity to the smartest, most beautiful girl in school.

  After Emery’s partner in the Corny Kids Variety Show, Josh, had moved away, Emery had gone through a series of useless friendships with boys who never really seemed like complete humans. There was Adam: too dumb, loved to plant farts in public that would be blamed on other people; loved to blow things up. Randy: too restless, couldn’t even watch TV; loved to blow things up. Geoff: too sporty, only wanted to kick things or throw things. Or blow things up. Mike: usually smelled like pork chops, except when he smelled like the burning remains from the things he had blown up (pumpkins, lizards, kelp, etc.). And then Emery discovered the magic of girls. They were calm. They liked to talk (Emery’s favorite girls would talk about politics, or the economy, or films). They weren’t interested in blowing things up. And although Emery loved adventure and wanted to travel, and live on a boat, and hike Machu Picchu, and go heliskiing in Switzerland, he didn’t want to blow things up.

  Emery turned left, away from the orchard, and pulled onto Katie’s street. She was at the house waiting for him; her parents wouldn’t be home until seven.

  Emery and Katie were a perfect couple. They had already planned their lives together. They would have two kids, a girl named Matisse and a boy named Piet (both after the painters). They would live in Paris at first, but then would raise their children in Barcelona where the weather was more temperate. Katie would be an international lawyer, defending women in third world countries against all the inequities women in those places suffer. And Emery would be an ambassador, maybe, or an architect. Something both creative and commercial. There was no way he’d be like his mother, suffering in her studio alone with the radio all day, making etchings that reflected a nightmarish inner life. And he certainly wasn’t going to be like his father, working in an office the size of a hotel suite with one secretary and one receptionist. And his sisters, well, who knew what was to become of them. The only stuff Portia reported from college was whom she was hanging out with, whom she was in love with, and how she spent her weekends. As far as Emery could tell, she wasn’t even taking classes. Anna had graduated from college and was living in Jackson, Wyoming, where she skied in the winter and waitressed all year. Who would allow her parents to spend all that money on an education and then become a waitress? Not even a restaurant manager, but a waitress!

  Emery pulled into the driveway of Katie’s house. He cut the engine, turned the rearview mirror, and poked his hair up with his fingers like a rake. He had used so much gel that his hair felt like rubber. But he liked the volume the gel gave him, the upward thrust of his head. Sometime around puberty Emery’s blond hair had turned brown. Louise had colored it for him the first time. She bought a box of Nice ’n Easy at the grocery store, lit up a joint, and brought Emery back to his original color. Buzzy never even noticed. Now Emery colored it himself, every four weeks or so. The white made his tan look even deeper, made his brown eyes more profoundly brown.

  Emery turned the mirror back in place and looked toward Katie’s looming house. The grass was like a green shag rug. The giant windows reflected like mirrors. The red door had a floral wreath on it with a little wooden clog in the center on which was painted “Velkommen, Friends.”

  “Go in,” Emery said aloud. Why was he hesitating? Shouldn’t he be running for the chance to have sex with this five-foot-nine-inch California Amazonian goddess? At five-eleven (this week, he seemed to be growing an inch a week), Emery was barely taller than Katie. And they weighed exactly the same—both of them lean and sinewy, with perfectly tawny skin. Vicky Smathers in their English class had pointed out that Emery and Katie looked like twins. Everyone laughed and a few kids at school had taken to calling them the Twins. Katie liked that; she called Emery “Twin” and signed her notes to him, All my love, Your twin.

  Emery pulled the key out of the ignition and got out of the car. He felt like he had the lead role in a play and just now realized, moments before the curtain was to open, that he didn’t know his lines. Well, at least there wouldn’t be an audience.

  Emery walked to the door, knocked, and then opened. Katie was in the kitchen dipping Oreo cookies into a big glass of milk. Emery pulled out some Oreos, stacked them in front of himself, and started dipping, too.

  “Okay,” Katie said, “we better do this if we’re going to do it before my parents get home.”

  They were in her bedroom on the big copper bed. The bed’s rails and knobs reminded Emery of plumbing or a factory. Katie removed all her clothes and got under the covers before Emery had a chance to see her totally naked in the bare, bright light. A guy in calculus, Toby Robitzer, had gone on and on about seeing his girlfriend totally naked in the bare, bright light. Emery had realized then that he’d never even wondered about Katie in bare, bright light. He didn’t know it was something he should want.

  “Okeydokey.” Emery peeled off his clothes and slipped under the covers. He and Katie held each other, face to face, kissing with little birdlike pecks. Emery slid his hands down along Katie’s body; she was as smooth and flat as he was.

  Katie put her knees up and nudged Emery on top of herself.

  “Okay, I’m ready. I already put the sponge in.” She smiled and Emery smiled back. And then he started laughing. He was imagining a giant yellow kitchen sponge, maybe speckled black from coffee grounds on it, sitting in her vagina.

  “You put a sponge in?” Emery couldn’t stop laughing.

  “A contraceptive sponge!” Kate giggled and slapped Emery on the shoulder. Emery laughed harder.

  “If it were a sponge from my house,” he said, “it would smell like curdled milk and be as thin and nonabsorbent as cardboard.”

  “Gross!” Katie laughed some more, then got serious. “Okay, we have to do this.”

  “Put your knees down,” Emery said. He felt like he had mounted a balance beam. Katie dropped her knees and Emery put his legs outside of hers. He placed his hand on his penis and tried to push it inside Katie. It felt fairly smooth and snug; he figured he was in. Emery bobbed up and down a little, tentatively, like he was dancing.

  “I don’t think that’s right,” Katie said. “I think it’s going in between my legs.”

  “Really?” Emery stopped bouncing and looked at her. “It feels like it’s in.”

  “No. That’s the pressure from my thighs.” The sheet was tented over Emery’s back. The two of them looked down toward their crotches as if a clear visual could somehow help them make this work.

  “How do I get it in?” Emery asked.

  Katie put her hand on Emery’s penis and tried to feed it into herself. Emery felt like he was a sweatpants drawstring that had come out in the wash and was being threaded back into the tiny hole.

  “It’s not working,” Katie said. They both stared some more: at each other, at their own bodies.

  “I know!” Emery said. “Your legs go on the outside and mine go on the inside!”

  “Oh yeah! DUH!” Katie choked out a little snigger.

  They rearranged their legs. Katie threaded Emery again, only this time he went in. Emery thought she felt warm, and slightly damp and strange. Like he had wrapped his penis in a piece of cooked bologna.

  “Now I think you need to move again,” Katie said.

  “Oh, yeah.” Emery did his bouncy little dance and Katie started giggling.

  “Am I doing it wrong?” Emery couldn’t not laugh—Katie’s giggles were like bubbles of alcohol popping in his throat.

  “I don’t know!” Katie was still laughing. “I think we need to focus.”

  “Okay, I’ll focus.” Emery contained himself and shut his eyes. He tried to concentrate, but there was a buzzing in his ear, like a mosquito you can’t find in a dark room. The mosquito was buzzing that something was wrong with him, something was amiss. This was sex. He was a teenager. This was the thing he was supposed to want more than anything
. But Emery felt like he was watching a boring TV show with characters he didn’t really like. He was doing it until a normal amount of time had passed. He was waiting it out.

  “Are you done?” Katie tapped Emery on the shoulder. He opened his eyes.

  “Yeah. Are you done?”

  “Yeah,” Katie said. She sounded like she might start giggling again. Emery didn’t look at her face as he pulled his penis out and collapsed on top of her. Then he did look at her and they had a chugging, hard laugh for a couple minutes.

  When the laughing stopped, Emery rolled off Katie and lay by her side. They held hands under the sheet.

  “So, I guess we’ve lost our virginity,” she said.

  “I guess,” Emery said. “What did it feel like for you?”

  “It felt like a big giant tampon that I was starting to pull out but then decided to leave in, but then decided to pull out. You know. The in and out.”

  “Maybe it starts to feel good the more you do it,” Emery said.

  Neither of them said anything for a while. Then Katie squeezed Emery’s hand. “Hey Twin, would you care if we didn’t try again for a couple weeks or something? My vagina feels sort of inflamed—I think it needs to rest.”

  “No, I don’t care.” Emery smiled. He was so relieved she didn’t want to do this every day. It was ridiculous and uncomfortable and . . . well, who needed it? He and Katie were the ideal couple—why did they have to ruin everything with strange, giggling nudity and the penetration of different body parts into different holes? Who even said a penis had to go into a vagina? Why not a toe, or a nose? Emery wouldn’t have felt any differently about the interaction if it had been his toe or his nose!

  At home, Emery saw Portia’s duffle bag in the entrance hall and remembered that today was the day she was coming home for the summer. Emery walked right past the bag and straight upstairs to the bathroom. He wanted to shower and wash Katie off himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her; she was the greatest person he knew, and wasn’t that love? And it wasn’t that he was particularly a neat-freak or afraid of germs; he had spent a good couple of years playing in the compost pile in the backyard. But suddenly, Emery was aware of and feeling jittery about Katie’s dead skin cells shedding; the exchange of oils and microbes; the millions of microscopic parasites that lived on skin and hair jumping from her body to his. And then there was Katie’s vagina. What was in that vagina, anyway? It was a landscape that never saw open air, never smelled a lemon orchard. He wanted it off him, gone, his skin all shiny and new again.

  After his shower, Emery walked into the family room, his hair freshly regelled, his body smelling of citrus. Buzzy was on the phone; he was speaking in that low rumbling of emergencies and secrets. Emery’s mother and sister were on the couch, quieter than normal. Portia jumped up when she saw Emery and ran to hug him.

  “Baby brother!” she said. “I miss you.” Emery shrugged. He didn’t not miss his sister, but he hadn’t thought about her much.

  “What’s going on?” Emery nodded toward Buzzy.

  “Your sister’s suicidal,” Louise said. Portia took Emery’s hand and pulled him toward the couch. She dropped down next to Louise. Emery sat in the chair.

  “Anna?”

  “Well, not me!” Portia said.

  Buzzy hung up the phone and started pacing the room. “You don’t have a drug problem, do you?” Buzzy asked. He stopped walking and scratched behind his ear like a dog.

  “Who, me?!” Emery smiled. Of course he didn’t have a drug problem! He was president of the Junior Statesmen, for crying out loud!

  “Not you!” Buzzy waved his hand. “Your sister!”

  “No,” Portia said. The last time she and Emery had talked on the phone she told him that she had quit doing drugs, quit having sex with strangers (“Too many fingerprints on my body”), and even quit smoking cigarettes because her teeth were now the color of wet tea bags. Emery had no interest in details like this when it came to his sisters’ lives, but he couldn’t help but remember them and file them away in his long-term memory.

  “I’ll call Dorey and ask her for a recommendation,” Buzzy said, and he went to the kitchen counter and picked up the wall phone.

  “Are you STILL seeing Dorey?” Emery asked. Dorey was the psychiatrist Buzzy had been seeing since they moved to California. Anna had seen her during her period of retarded physical development when she loathed Portia because Portia had her period and breasts before Anna did. Emery saw her the year before his bar mitzvah when he was questioning the purpose and intent of religion. Louise saw her on and off over the years when she and Buzzy did couples therapy. Portia had only seen her once when Buzzy felt they should try to do family therapy.

  “Of course I’m still seeing Dorey,” Buzzy said, and he dialed her number, which he clearly had memorized. “Why would you ask such a question? Why would you say such a thing?!” Buzzy glared at Emery as he waited for Dorey to pick up the phone.

  “Your father’s upset about your sister,” Louise said to Emery. Then she looked at Buzzy and said, “Don’t fucking snap at Emery! He just walked in the door—you haven’t even said hello!” Louise went to the chair, leaned over Emery, and gave him kisses that he didn’t feel he needed. He could handle a little snapping from Buzzy; it wasn’t going to crumble him into bits. Louise pulled away and flopped back onto the couch. The coffee table in front of them was crowded with magazines, the newspaper, and two ceramic bowls, one with nuts and three silver chevron nutcrackers, and one with oranges. Emery watched as Louise rummaged through the litter and pulled out a clamshell ashtray that held a half-smoked joint. Louise shifted the magazines, felt along the table, and finally came up with a pack of matches. She lit the joint, then held it out toward her daughter. Emery rolled his eyes. The only thing worse than his mother’s smoking pot was the fact that she tried to get his sisters to smoke with her.

  “No, thanks,” Portia said.

  Louise pulled the joint back to her mouth and inhaled deeply, holding the smoke for a few seconds before blowing it out. Buzzy was leaving a message with Dorey’s answering service.

  “So what’d Anna say?” Emery asked.

  “I don’t know,” Portia said. “I only got here a couple minutes before you did.”

  “Oy, gut,” Louise said in a fake Yiddish accent, and she took another hit off the joint.

  “Did she really try to kill herself?” Emery asked.

  “No!” Louise said. “She won’t kill herself. She’s too selfish. She’s like your dad.”

  “But she’s threatening it?” Portia asked.

  “She’s been calling all week, wanking into the phone, waaa waaa waa, I’m going to kiiiill myself, I hate myself, I hate my liiiiife!”

  Emery was so startled by his mother’s whiny, nasally imitation of his suicidal sister that he started laughing. Portia laughed, too. Louise tittered and continued. “My life is poooooooointless, I don’t want to liiiiiive! Tell Portia and Emery that I loooove them!” Louise laughed so hard she choked and began coughing up smoke.

  Portia imitated her mother imitating her sister: “Tell Portia and Emery I looooooove them!” Emery could feel his eyes squint as he cracked up. He couldn’t help himself in spite of the fact that he truly, honestly, sincerely believed it was wrong to mock the suicidal.

  Louise howled, shaking her joint in the air. She took a hit, then picked up where her daughter had stopped. “I’ve been doing coke every day, I can’t even see straight, I sold all my clothes to buy cooooooke—”

  “She really sold her clothes?!” Emery asked. “What? Her thrift-store clothes?”

  “I’m naaaaaaked,” Louise whined, “and now I’m going to kill myself because I haaaaaate myself!”

  “Is she really naked? Is anyone with her?” There was a funny feeling in Emery’s stomach, like a small animal was swimming there. Emery realized the feeling was his reaction to his desperate sister. The nudity had made it all seem entirely serious, and even a little scary.

/>   Buzzy walked over to the couch, leaned over to kiss his daughter a couple times on the forehead, kissed Emery once on the forehead, then sat next to Louise.

  “Oy,” he said, and he slapped his hand against his head.

  “Tell Dad I loooooove him!” The couch shook with Louise’s hysterics.

  Buzzy looked at Louise and Portia laughing. He looked at Emery, who gave a worried shrug.

  “I don’t understand what’s so funny about this?” Buzzy said. He didn’t seem upset; he was genuinely curious.

  “Oh, she’s not going to kill herself!” Louise said. “She’s just a pain in the ass. She wants us to prove that we love her by flying all the way out to Wyoming and bringing her home.”

  “She says she’s addicted to drugs. She says she’s going to kill herself. Why would she say that if it weren’t true?” Buzzy leaned forward, picked up a nutcracker, and opened an almond.

  “She’s being ridiculous. So she did coke a few times! That doesn’t mean she’s an addict! Portia’s probably done it and she’s not wanking on the phone and asking for help.”

  Buzzy, Louise, and Emery looked at Portia. Emery knew she’d done it, but he wasn’t going to rat her out.

  “I did it, but I didn’t like it,” Portia said.

  “Anna always takes the simplest thing and makes it a crisis.”

  “Like when she barfed twice a day,” Buzzy said, mocking Louise. “That wasn’t bulimia—that was a simple diet that she turned into a crisis!”

  Louise chortled. “Right. A diet! The girl goes on a diet and suddenly she gets all this attention, gets to go to the shrink three times a week, go to the hospital for a couple weeks—”

  “She went to the hospital for bulimia?” Emery asked. No one had ever mentioned it to him. Maybe she was legitimately insane.

  “Before she moved to Jackson Hole,” Louise said.

  “So she was hospitalized for it?!” Emery had been living in the house with Anna at the time. How could he not have noticed that she was missing?